MOSCOW, August 11 (RIA Novosti) – Japan’s National Police Agency announced that the number of dead and missing as a result of the 2011 disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has reached 21,586, Japan Today reported on its website Monday.
According to the website, 18,498 people lost their lives in the Fukushima catastrophe, while 3,088 later died from illnesses caused by the disaster.
The prefectures that suffered the most losses were: Miyagi, with 9,538 victims; Iwate, with 4,673 dead and Fukushima itself, where the death toll is currently 1,611. The nuclear disaster also claimed lives of seven Tokyo residents. The remains of another 90 victims have still not been identified.
In Miyagi 1,269 people are missing, while in Iwate and Fukushima those unaccounted for number 1,132 and 204 respectively.
Earlier on Monday, officers from Japan’s police force and Maritime Safety Agency carried out another search operation in an attempt to find those still missing. Searches are conducted on the 11th day of every month at the request of the victims’ families.
On March 11, 2011, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant was hit by a powerful earthquake and a subsequent tsunami, causing a partial meltdown of three of the plant’s nuclear reactors, as radiation leaked into the atmosphere, soil and sea. The incident became the world’s worst nuclear disaster since the 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe.
